Hashtag Essay

1321 Words3 Pages

Back in the 1960s, the media’s role from an institutionalist perspective was that media created the construction of truth, where although media obscure the news, it still created a new reality and leaders. Today, that has changed due to new social media outlets, such as Facebook, Twitter and Youtube that allows individuals to release real news such as the The Black Lives Matter Movement (BLM) with the #blm hashtag. This hashtag started as a conversation between three sisters on Facebook when a guy by the name of George Zimmerman, who shot African-American teen Trayvon Martin was released. Therefore, #blm became a bigger movement and utilize whenever there were occurrences of racism. With the hashtag, it shows empowerment and creates dialogue …show more content…

Therefore, back in the 1960’s, people relied on mass media, such as television and the newspaper which was a reflection of truth, where it told people what was going and a deflection of truth, where the process information became distorted. Therefore, one was not sure whether media was tricking or informing them, but it created a new reality. In addition, people who were in certain movements had no real organization and everyone was distrustful of leaders, because no one wanted a hierarchical system. However, that is not the case for the BLM Movement. The BLM Movement organize events through careful planning on social media and they all trust one another. And when the BLM Movements does get shown on the media, it mostly consist of people marching in unity, shutting down highways, streets, stores, interrupting important speeches and peacefully protesting while shouting out “Black Lives Matter”. Therefore, there is not a single individual that gets shown to be the leader of the BLM Movement on media. Sometimes, the BLM Movement has to even fight for the media’s attention that I will further …show more content…

Kalev Leetaru, a contributor of Forbes looks at data through web searches and televisions to find out whether the BLM Movement is striving or fading. Through his research he notices that searches for the topic of the BLM Movement on Google and Youtube web searches did not happen until Ferguson Officer Darren Wilson was found not guilty of the shooting of Michael Brown, an African American who was unarmed (Leetaru 2015). However, what really cause the search to rise was when BLM protesters took over Bernie Sander’s microphone who is running in the presidential campaign and was trying to get votes. Therefore, they prevented him from speaking and got their message about “Black Lives Matter” out on the media. This shows that there are times when BLM does not even get to be on the media, which causes them to interrupt presidential candidates to gain their spotlight in media. This is similar to how Jerry Rubin received a subpoena to appear in court, but he utilize that moment and wore the American Revolutionary War costume which earned him a “national reputation” and “launched his career” as a seller of a symbol of being against the Vietnam war (Gitlin 2003: 172). However, instead of an individual, it was a group of people who was protesting about BLM and similar to how Rubin utilize his moments to represent his anti-war “Yippie Group,” the BLM

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